


I get them too

by fraternite



Series: The Victors [1]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Anxiety, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hunger Games AU, Nightmares, Platonic Cuddling, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-26
Updated: 2014-04-06
Packaged: 2018-01-10 01:22:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1153103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fraternite/pseuds/fraternite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They played the Capitol's games, and they won.  Sometimes, they wish they hadn't.</p><p>Enjolras, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac are Hunger Games victors, brought together by their struggle to come to terms with what they went through and what they did--and by their desire to make the Capitol answer for its actions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Three A.M.

It was three A.M., the first night of the media extravaganza that proceeded every year's Hunger Games.  Tomorrow would be makeovers and interviews and flashbulbs and cocktail hours (the focus would be on the tributes, but until they were chosen and revealed to the city, the press made do with previous years' victors), but instead of being in bed asleep, Enjolras and Combeferre were up talking in one of the lounges in the victor's complex.  The hours ran away as they discussed the food shortages in the districts, the way the media practically determined what everyone in the Capitol thought without quite seeming to, the need for communication between the districts, the chances of a victors’ protest (if they could even get enough other victors to take them seriously) getting enough coverage to make a difference before it was shut down.  In a way it seemed wrong to spend hours and hours just talking, when people back in the districts were working hard, sweating and bleeding and starving.  But in a life that consisted mostly of media appearances and press-release soundbytes and showing one’s face at the most important social events, these late-night conversations during the few weeks the victors were all together every year sometimes seemed the only real things in Enjolras’s life.

They had been alone in the lounge for so long, sprawled out on the white leather bucket sofas with the darkness of the hallway on one side and the starscape of the city beyond the panoramic window on the other, that the small, soft noise from outside their small circle of light caught Enjolras’s ear immediately.  He paused in the middle of a rant about the violence-oriented marketing used for every product from toothpaste to breakfast cereal to glance out into the hallway.  Someone was standing just beyond the doorway (was it a doorway?  The extra-wide doorways that the building had been designed with sometimes made the whole thing feel like one giant honeycomb of a room) to the lounge, as if hesitant to come inside.

It took him a minute to recognize Courfeyrac, the victor from a few years back from District 8.  Instead of the stylish outfits he usually wore (in vibrant shades that rivaled even the most drastic Capitol fashions), he was dressed in an old gray shirt and a ragged pair of loose-fitting pajama pants.  They were rumpled from being slept in, as was his hair.  His constant smile, too, was gone, and his face was pale.  He shifted from foot to foot as he looked nervously between Enjolras and Combeferre with sleep-dark eyes.

“Sorry.  I didn’t realize anyone would be in here.  It’s . . . isn’t it late?”

Enjolras glanced at his watch and was surprised to see it was already past 3 am.  “I guess we lost track of the time.  What about you, what are you doing up so late?”

Courfeyrac hesitated before answering.  “Trouble sleeping,” he mumbled.  He made as if to turn away, but didn’t seem to want to leave.

“Come join us,” Combeferre offered softly.  “We’re just plotting to solve all the world’s problems.”

A ghost of a grin flickered across the victor’s face, and he padded across the lounge to take a seat on the couch next to Enjolras.  He pulled his feet up onto the sofa and clasped his arms around his knees.  Up close, Enjolras could see that his eyes were red, and there was a tightness to his mouth that he recognized well.  He’d seen the same expression many times in his own mirror.

“Do you get them bad?” he asked, quietly.

“Hm?”  Courfeyrac dragged a hand through his curly hair, looking down at the geometric carpet.

“Nightmares.”  When it looked like Courfeyrac might be about to protest or make up some excuse, he added, “I get them too.  I think we all do.”

Courfeyrac shrugged and tried to laugh.  “I guess so.  Part of the package, right?”

“What can we do?” Enjolras offered.

“I’m okay,” Courfeyrac said, though there was still a tremor in his voice.  “I’m fine.”

“You’re shaking,” Combeferre pointed out quietly.

“Look, we’re not enemies,” Enjolras said.   _Not anymore. I killed your people and you killed mine, but now we’re the only people we have.  We can’t afford to be enemies._   “We should stick together, help each other out.  Do you want to talk--”

“No,” Courfeyrac said at once.  His eyes darted toward the door.

“That’s fine, you don’t have to,” Enjolras told him quickly.  “It helps me, but it’s different for everyone.  Do you want some water?  Or we could put on some music, there’s a phone port so there’s got to be speakers built in somewhere.  What helps?”

Courfeyrac’s cheeks reddened and Enjolras had to remind himself that nightmares and the other side effects of being in the arena were nearly taboo among most of the victors.  He himself had been talked down from nightmares enough times by Combeferre to lose his awkwardness about the subject, but Courfeyrac had perhaps never talked to anyone about it before.

“I--I just need to be with people,” Courfeyrac said, very quietly.  “It helps me remember where I am, that I’m not--that I’m here, now.  And it gives me something to pay attention to, to stay grounded.  Go ahead and talk about whatever it was you were saying before, if I can just sit here and listen . . .”

“That we can do, easily,” Enjolras said with a smile.  “Once you get us started, we are probably better at talking than our friends would like.  Is there anything else?”

Courfeyrac looked down, and when he spoke his voice was almost a whisper.  “Could . . . could I sit close to you?”

Enjolras beckoned and Courfeyrac shyly scooted down the couch toward him.  Enjolras gently put an arm around his shoulders.  “Is this okay?” he asked.  Courfeyrac nodded vigorously and leaned into him just a bit.

“You still never told me what the commissioner said to you,” Combeferre said to Enjolras.

“Wait, when?”

“At the party last week.  When you looked like you wanted to curse him out in front of everyone.  I asked you, remember, and you said you’d tell me later?”

“Oh, that.  Well, we were talking about that new law, the one about the extra regulations on electronic devices.  I said it was paranoia on the government’s part, that nobody in the districts can afford the kind of devices the law applies to, and he said . . .”

They swung back into their conversation, moving from the commissioner’s bigotry to the law he’d been arguing in favor of, and onward--though they took care to keep the conversation away from the Games.  They also, by wordless agreement, avoided mentioning their more treasonous notions; Enjolras felt instinctively that Courfeyrac would be no danger to them in that respect, but he knew that the smart thing to do would be to wait and get a better sense of who he was before risking it, and he owed it to Combeferre, if not to the importance of the cause itself, to be careful.  

So they talked about less sensitive things, and before long Enjolras felt Courfeyrac’s shoulders stop trembling, and then lose some of their tension.  He leaned into Enjolras less tentatively, and dropped his head to rest on Enjolras’s shoulder.  

It was nearly four thirty when Combeferre, through an enormous yawn, said he didn’t think he could stay awake any longer--not if he was going to retain some brain function for the TV spot they were recording the next morning (not that more than ten seconds of the footage would actually be used, but he didn’t want to look like a morphling in what did get aired).  There was a small awkward moment as they glanced toward Courfeyrac.

“I think I’ll be okay,” he said, and there was only a hint of anxiety in his smile.  “Thank you.  This--this really helped.”

“We’re always willing to help out again,” Combeferre told him.  “I’m serious: You know where my rooms are.  Come by any time; wake me up if I’m sleeping.  I know--we both know--what it’s like.”

“The same goes for me,” Enjolras assured him.

“Thanks,” Courfeyrac said, and his voice sounded a little more relaxed this time.  “I really appreciate it.  I mean, you guys hardly know me, and it’s not like I deserve--”

“Everyone deserves to be okay,” Enjolras said sharply.  “What happened to us--what we did, what the Capitol made us do--doesn’t change that.”

“There aren’t a lot of us who’ve been through what we have,” Combeferre added.  “If we aren’t here for each other, who will be?”


	2. Chapter 2

The Courfeyrac of the daylight was a very different person from the one who had cautiously approached Enjolras and Combeferre in the lounge.  When the sun was up, Courfeyrac shone along with it, brimming over with good humor and enthusiasm.  He joked and laughed with the other victors, smiled for the cameras, and really _listened_ when you talked to him.  He seemed all confidence and cheerfulness, an enthusiastic young man who loved himself and everyone else in the world.

But a very different Courfeyrac appeared at Enjolras’s door a week or so after the first night, a shamed, mirthless grin on his white face, to nestle in his couch and listen to him rant about the idiots on the online forums who thought that the poorer districts were so because they didn’t work as efficiently as say, district 2.  After about an hour, he thanked Enjolras and went back to his room, and the next morning they didn’t talk about it.

For a few days, everything went on as normal, then Courfeyrac joined them again in the lounge one night, a little unsteady but looking better than he had the first time.

“It gets worse as the games get closer,” was all he said when Combeferre asked if he was all right.  It was then three days before the Games.  

Later, Enjolras found out that the next night--two days before the Games started--Combeferre had woken up to a teary-faced Courfeyrac knocking on his door at four in the morning.  He’d brushed off his apologies and let him in to lean on his shoulder and listen to him read aloud from a geology text he was studying.  It had been nearly dawn when Courfeyrac returned to his room.

And then--nothing.  The two days passed, the Games began, and Enjolras left his door unlocked, just in case, but Courfeyrac didn’t come by.  Enjolras wondered whether he should ask him about it, but he didn’t seem to like to talk about his nightmares during the day (or at all, really) and Enjolras didn’t want to confront him on it.

And everything was so busy, with the Games, anyway--even though Enjolras himself didn’t have much to do.  Enjolras was one of several victors from his district, and when he had refused to perform the mentoring duties on the grounds that helping children kill other children was morally equivalent to fighting in the games again himself, it hadn’t been met with much resistance.  (He’d almost wished it _had_ been; that it could have been a Statement, something to draw attention to the barbarity of the Games.  But the fact of the matter was that, as one of many, he was fairly expendable and not worth the fuss getting his help back would entail.)  

Combeferre, on the other hand, was the only living victor from his district--and as much as he hated to play any part in the games, he could never bring himself to abandon the two children who looked to him as their only chance of survival.  So between the official events for the victors (used to fill in downtime while the Tributes in the arena slept or wandered through featureless forests) and his attempts to round up sponsors that might buy his tributes a few more hours of survival, Combeferre always spent the Games (or at least the first few days) in a frenzy of activity.

Courfeyrac’s tributes were a young pair, the girl a tiny 14-year-old and the boy just barely 13.  Both had been in the bottom four after the skills assessments, and their shy, stammering interviews hadn’t projected any kind of confidence or hidden depths.  Still, Courfeyrac campaigned fiercely on their behalf, and even managed to snag them some sponsors out of pure charm.  By the afternoon of the first day, he’d amassed just enough to send them each a small vial of safe drinking water--hoping they’d take it as a signal that some of the springs in the Arena were poison.  They got the gifts, but not the message; that evening, Enjolras stood with his hand on Courfeyrac’s shoulder as they watched the children gasp out their last breaths between blue lips within ten minutes of each other.

After that, Enjolras didn’t see too much of Courfeyrac for a few days.  He showed his face in the victors’ hall from time to time, just enough that Enjolras didn’t have to worry about him.  He looked stressed out and tired, but didn’t they all?  And he was smiling and even laughing sometimes, as always, so Enjolras thought he was all right.  It wasn’t--and this was just one of a thousand terrible things about the Games, but it was true--it wasn’t like he didn’t go through this every year.

On the evening of the fourth day of the games, Courfeyrac appeared at Enjolras’s doorway not long after sundown.  Combeferre was busy with Victor duties, since one of his tributes was still alive and kicking, and Enjolras had spent the evening alone, reading articles on economics and industry, and drinking tea in an unsuccessful attempt to stave off a headache--these subjects didn’t come naturally to him, and twenty years of ignorance and apathy to catch up from didn’t help.

“Come on in,” Enjolras said, clearing a pile of highlighted and scribbled-on papers from the other chair.  “I’m just studying.”

Courfeyrac perched on the edge of the seat.  “What are you studying?”

Enjolras started to explain, but he was distracted by the dark circles under Courfeyrac’s eyes, the way his glance darted around the room, the gray cast to his cheeks.  “Are you okay?” he broke off to ask.  “You look awful.”

“I’m o--” Courfeyrac gulped.  “Well, no.  Not really.  But I will be.  Okay, that is.  Go on, what were you saying about microchip production?”

Enjolras continued his explanation of the issues discussed in the article he was halfway through, a piece about inefficiencies and planned obsolescence in the technology industry.  As he talked, he found ideas starting to make more sense; the process of putting them into words to convey them to Courfeyrac helped Enjolras understand them a little better.  And Courfeyrac seemed to be relaxing a bit under the steady stream of words.  Maybe they should do this more often, Enjolras thought.  It seemed to be good for both of them.

Until Courfeyrac, without warning, flung out his arms, his face going gray.

“What’s wrong?”

“Dizzy,” Courfeyrac muttered.  He gripped the edge of the couch with white knuckles, closing his eyes.  “Going to fall.”

Enjolras jumped up and grabbed Courfeyrac’s shoulders, steadying him.  “Put your head between your knees,” he instructed.  “I’ll get you a glass of water.”  He hurried into the kitchenette; when he returned, Courfeyrac was still bent over his knees, resting his head on his crossed arms.

“Are you okay?” Enjolras asked quietly.

“Yeah.”  Courfeyrac gingerly lifted his head.  “Everything just suddenly started spinning.  It’s mostly better now.”  He took the glass of water Enjolras offered and sipped from it.  “I’m sorry, I don’t--”

“Don’t apologize,” Enjolras said.  “There’s no need.”  He sat down across from Courfeyrac, watching him carefully.  There was a little more color in his face, but he still looked pale and exhausted.  “Have you been eating all right?”

A wry grin ghosted across Courfeyrac’s face.  “Not really.”

“Why not?”

“Felt too sick.  I . . . um . . . haven’t really slept.  In a few days.”

Enjolras gaped at him.  “You haven’t slept at all?”

He shrugged.  “A few minutes here and there.  I--I do this every year.  It’s . . . too bad, right around the Games.”

“Courfeyrac, you need to sleep!  You’re going to make yourself really sick.”

Courfeyrac looked down at the floor.  “I can’t,” he muttered.  “Not when I know I’m just going to wake up screaming in the dark again.”

That was a story Enjolras understood all too well--and he knew there wasn’t any quick and easy solution.  After thinking for a minute, he suggested, “Would it be easier if you slept here?  I’ll be here.  I can leave the lights on, if that makes it better.”

Courfeyrac hesitated.  “I don’t want to be a bother.  It . . . it’s going to be bad.”

“I have bad nights too,” Enjolras reminded him.  “Don’t worry about it.”

Enjolras could see the struggle playing out in Courfeyrac’s face, his desperation for help warring with his shame over needing it, and he thought for a minute he was going to insist on keeping his problems to himself.  But in the end, he needed the sleep too badly, and he meekly acquiesced.  Enjolras turned down the bed for him and returned to his studying to give Courfeyrac his space. It was no surprise when he glanced up, not even five minutes after Courfeyrac had laid down, to find the boy fast asleep, curled up in a tight ball under the huge puffy duvet.

Twenty minutes later, Enjolras was taking a break to get himself a fresh cup of tea when Courfeyrac started screaming.  Enjolras jumped, sloshing hot water over his hand, at the first strangled cry.  His stomach twisted as he ran from the kitchenette--those screams, the desperate, wordless cries of utter terror, were all too familiar to him; he’d heard them himself many times in the arena.  And he had been their cause.

Courfeyrac had jolted himself out of sleep by the time Enjolras reached him, but the wild look in his dark eyes said he wasn’t entirely back in the real world yet.  His breathing was fast and frantic and he was shaking violently.  His hands were twisted in his hair, dragging at the dark curls.

“Get me out, get me out,” he sobbed, not seeming to see Enjolras.

“Courfeyrac.  Courfeyrac, it’s okay.”  Enjolras cautiously laid a hand on Courfeyrac’s shoulder, but he flinched away from the touch.  Enjolras withdrew the hand and kept talking quietly.  “You’re safe, Courfeyrac; it was just a nightmare.”

Courfeyrac curled in on himself, pressing his trembling fists into his eyes.  Choking sobs shook his shoulders.  “You’re safe,” Enjolras repeated.  “You’re here in my bedroom and you’re absolutely safe.  Everything’s okay.”

“I--can’t--” Courfeyrac sobbed, the words strangled almost beyond recognition.  “I--can’t--stop--seeing--it.”

“Okay, it’ll be okay.  Breathe for me, okay?  In for three, out for three.  In . . . and out.”  Courfeyrac managed a short, shaky breath, then one a little deeper.  “Good.  Keep breathing, as slow as you can.”

Courfeyrac got through two ragged breaths, then-- “Going to--be sick,” he gasped.  Enjolras grabbed the trash can (blessing the allergies that kept it within a tissue toss of his bed) and rubbed Courfeyrac’s back as he retched over it.

“Breathe,” he reminded him again when he was through.  “You’re safe.  Everything’s okay.  Just keep breathing.”  Courefyrac’s whole body shuddered, and his eyes still flitted around the room.  He kept jumping at shadows in the corners.  “Here, try something for me,” Enjolras suggested.  “Can you count with me?  Backwards, from twenty.  Twenty, nineteen . . .”

“Twenty,” Courfeyrac echoed, still gasping for breath.  “Twenty . . . nineteen . . . eighteen . . .”

“Good, keep going.”

Another sob racked Courfeyrac’s body.  “Seventeen.”  He jumped and his head whipped around to stare at the far corner of the room.

“Seventeen,” Enjolras reminded him.

“Seventeen.”  Courfeyrac’s hand found Enjolras’s and clenched on it.  “Sixteen.  Fifteen.”  He took another shaky breath.  “Uh . . . fourteen.”

“Good.”  Enjolras said again.  Cautiously, he started rubbing Courfeyrac’s back again as he continued counting; when Courfeyrac’s taut shoulders relaxed a bit under his hand, he took it as a good sign and kept it up.

“Ten.”  Courfeyrac’s breathing was steadier now.  “Nine.  Eight.  Seven.  Six.”  He hiccupped and almost grinned.  “Five, four, three-- _hic_ \--two, one.”  He took another deep breath.

“Okay?” Enjolras asked him.

“Yeah,” he said shakily, wiping the tears from his cheeks.  His hands were still shaking and his eyes haunted, but at least he was breathing almost normally again.  “That counting thing . . . it helped.”

“I hoped it would.  It helps me--it’s something to focus my mind on, to get it away from other things.  Sometimes I list the major cities of the districts, that helps too.  So.  You could probably use some water?”

“Thanks,” Courfeyrac nodded.  “And I want to get up.  I’m not going back to sleep now anyway.”

Enjolras helped him untangle himself from the sheets and he moved back over to the couch while Enjolras emptied the trash can and got him a fresh glass of water.  When he returned, Courfeyrac had his knees pulled up to his chest, his hands clenched around his ankles and fingernails digging in.

“I’m sorry about all this,” he groaned.  “I’m such a pain in the ass; I don’t know why you put up with me.  You have better things to do than coddle some kid who can’t deal with his own issues.”

“Where’d this come from?” Enjolras handed him the glass of water.  “Come on, Courfeyrac, you know me.  I wouldn’t have asked you to stay if I didn’t want you to.”

Courfeyrac avoided Enjolras’s eyes.  “I don’t know why you bother with me,” he muttered.  “I don’t deserve it.”

“Of course you do.  Everyone deserves to get help when they need it.”

Courfeyrac shook his head.  “I’m . . . not a good person, Enjolras.”

“You _are_ a good person,” Enjolras insisted.  “The Capitol may have forced you to--”

Courfeyrac slammed the glass down on the coffee table, splashing water onto Enjolras’s papers.  “Don’t give me that bullshit,” he snapped.  “Enjolras, you _know_ what I did!  It doesn’t matter who set it up, I was the one who--when--”

Enjolras cut him off.  “Actually, I _don’t_ know.  That was the year after me--the year I boycotted watching the Games.  They dragged me out to the viewing hall, but I kept my eyes shut.”  Not that it had done any good; they’d faked his reactions of important moments with other footage and nobody outside the hall knew he’d done a thing.  “So no, I didn’t see your Games, and I don’t know what happened in them.  But even if I did know, how could I judge you?”

“All I had in the arena was a piece of metal frame, from an old concrete wall.”  Courfeyrac looked sick, but he pressed on.  “And I--”

“Courfeyrac, I had the highest kill record in _twenty years_ of the games.   _Eighteen_ of the tributes in my year died at my hands, all but two of them in hand-to-hand fighting, and the other two were--” he broke off.  “Sorry, the details don’t matter.  The point is, I did horrible things in the arena.   

“But the worst thing is, I was _proud_ of it.  I was proud that I’d ended eighteen lives.  I had spent my whole life training to kill people in the arena, holding myself back from volunteering every year because if I trained for one more year, I could be even better, and I finally went at seventeen because I was too scared of someone else being quicker to volunteer and then I would miss my chance.  

“The day I went into the arena, I wasn’t scared . . . just excited.  It doesn’t get any more fucked up than that.  I--I didn’t . . . I don’t think I even . . .”  

He was losing his train of thought, images from the Arena crowding in on him--grappling so closely with the dark-haired girl he could feel her screams as his knife tore her stomach open, the little boy who’d scrambled away from him with his jaw hanging from one side of his mouth, the crunch of a boy’s bones under his body when they fell from a cliff together onto the boulders.  He’d made himself face those memories, turning them over and over in his head for hours, hoping to diminish their power over him.  It hadn’t worked yet.

Enjolras sat down heavily on the couch, dropping his head into his hands, his stomach churning.  He would have to get better about talking about his own games, as much as it sickened him, if he wanted to . . . well, to do _anything_ of worth.  Because he was going to have to talk about his games, to a lot of people.  Anyone who fought a games the way he’d fought his and then tried to turn around and say the system was evil--they’d have a _lot_ of explaining to do.

He dragged himself back to the present and turned to look at Courfeyrac.  “Do you believe me now when I say I could never judge you for anything you had done, no matter what it was?”

Courfeyrac hesitated, then nodded slowly.  “I believe you.”  He dropped his eyes, picking at a thread sticking out from his pants.  “It . . . doesn’t mean I don’t still judge myself.”

Enjolras opened his mouth to argue, then, with effort, closed it again.   _Gradual, achievable change,_ Combeferre’s voice said in his head, and though Combeferre had been talking about reforming the political system, Enjolras thought the advice applied now as well.  They could talk about blame and judgement later.  “Do you believe me when I tell you I want to help you?” he asked instead.  “Because I’ve been there myself--still _am_ there--and I know what it’s like?”

Courfeyrac nodded again, meeting Enjolras’s eyes in surrender.  “Yes.”

“Good.  Then drink your water and come sit with me on the big couch.  I’ve got another article on battery manufacture, and one comparing trains and trucks as large-scale shipping methods--which do you want to hear?”

Courfeyrac managed a grin.  “They both sound so fascinating.”

“Exactly.  You’ll be asleep again in no time.”  He held up a hand at the frightened look that crossed Courfeyrac’s face.  “Which you _need_ ; twenty minutes is a start but it’s not enough to keep you going.”  He squeezed Courfeyrac’s shoulder as the other victor settled down beside him.  “I’ll be here,” he said softly.

And he was--when Courfeyrac drifted off to sleep after half an hour of fuel costs and infrastructure depreciation, and when another nightmare woke him at two in the morning.  And when he woke up to late-morning sunlight and the smell of coffee the next morning.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is of course Peeta's line in Catching Fire, and ever since I saw that scene, all I have wanted in the world is victors comforting each other after nightmares and helping each other cope with everything that happened to them. This is my first thing I've actually written on that scenario, but I suspect it won't be the only one.
> 
> This is part of an AU I'm working on where the amis are all Hunger Games victors. Enjolras is a career tribute who didn't realize until after he won how terrible what he was doing was and what the games turned the tributes into; now he is trying to figure out how to fight against the system--and also what being a winner under that system means for his role in that struggle.
> 
> Come say hi on tumblr! (http://takethewatch.tumblr.com)


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